Wide Open - Nicola Barker

...“complications”. The plot of Wide Open is really not complicated at all; much of it is pared down to match the landscape. The complications of the plot come at the end where the reader will learn much to explain how these characters came to be the way they are – I would call it complex but fascinating.

The other criticism that I have seen hurled at Barker is that she strives for “weirdness.” Her devices are odd indeed – if you read ...
...why Barker chose the title Wide Open with you.

“ I dreamed I saw you dead in a place by the water.
A ravaged place.
All flat and empty and wide open.”

What did I say right at the start? - Never EVER underestimate the importance of the physical landscape of a novel.

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For some inextricable reason it took two years for this ... more

I don’t want to offend anybody who was born and raised on the Isle of Sheppey, but well, it’s a rather odd place isn’t it?

Due I’m sure, to the fact that there is only one road attaching Sheppey to the mainland there have been jokes in the Kentish area about gene pools and bottoms of barrels for as long as I can remember.

Yet if you ever risk the journey into this most defensive of communities you might be surprised. The landscape is rather sparse, rather windswept, blasted and rather well, beautiful in a melancholy kind of way.

I think it is singly the oddest, most interesting and most lonesome place in England.

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Never underestimate the importance of the physical landscape of a novel.

Nicola Barker chose to set her novel “Wide Open” in Sheppey for good reason: to provide a backdrop oozing with wistfulness, with oddness, with an uncomfortable air of not belonging and with a melancholic outlook.

I think it’s a masterstroke.

Where else could we cope with meeting the drifter, Ronnie and his potential rescuer, erm, Ronnie. Why argue about the separateness of your soul from your body when you can just keep it in a box? Shouldn’t we all be monitoring motorway bridges and saving our right hand by just using our left one? Hummm, one of the Ronnies isn’t very well I suspect. Don’t let me mistake you into thinking this is somehow coocky and attractive: it isn’t. His oddness will drive you up the wall in the first part of the book simply because his peculiar actions are entirely unaccounted for, no mention is made of them… good heavens, perhaps we should think of his actions as “normal”.

We will come to understand Ronnie eventually: we will hear of the traumas he has undergone, and we will therefore begin to understand and to sympathise. However, Barker does not concern herself with the act of the traumas per se; she is only interested in what happens after the whirlwind has passed by: how we rebuild and cope.

The world of Ronnie and Ronnie is an evocative one, almost dreamy. Their relationship is complicated and tenuous and the reader wants it to survive, so that flotsam can help jetsam and these characters that the world forgot can cling successfully together.

How surprising it is to find then, that the central movements and implications of the plot are passed over to other characters. How bold.

Sara is tough, rough and just about coping. She is full of barriers and gruffness as she survives after the death of her husband on their small holding in Sheppey. We all know people like Sara, in some ways we admire her and in other ways she should be pitied, for cutting off her emotional life will surely curtail her personality in the end.

Conversely Lily hits us like a maelstrom, she is full of life, full of questions and full of fun. She is highly-strung, charged, energetic and wilful. Even if Lily never appears to wash her neck, her youth and exuberance carry her far into the reader’s affections.

So when Ronnie and Ronnie are most literally washed up on the beach before Sara and Lily, tenuous acquaintances are made: that is, socially incompetent, nervous, bashful and self-conscious acquaintances are made. Here in this bleached, stagnant, windy place, away from the gaze of the more worldly a story will be played out between these “acquaintances” that will hurt them all and send their tenuous worlds spiralling out of control.

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There seems to be a mass of critics that agree that Barker over-complicates her characterisations and even her plots. I fail to understand this. Her characters are complicated, yes – but they are believable and absorbing entirely due to these “complications”. The plot of Wide Open is really not complicated at all; much of it is pared down to match the landscape. The complications of the plot come at the end where the reader will learn much to explain how these characters came to be the way they are – I would call it complex but fascinating.

The other criticism that I have seen hurled at Barker is that she strives for “weirdness.” Her devices are odd indeed – if you read all her work you will quickly begin to see themes. For example, missing limbs are remarkably common and unwashed necks are veritably insisted upon! Does she seek weirdness or does weirdness find her?

My answer is I know not. I don’t know the author and I don’t care much for the question. Ultimately this novel works on a complex level and on a more ethereal dreamy level simultaneously. If the “devices” are in some sense artificial then I did not find this detracting from the work one jot.

Barker makes her readers work hard. We struggle to understand the loopy world of the two Ronnies for much of the plot and the deeply unattractive is repeatedly thrown at us to set us off course – the madness of Ronnie, the pornographer, the hissy fits, the paedophile…and of course, the rather alarming interactions with the herd of boars.

Reading this novel puts me in mind of the expression “you reap what you sow.”
She works you hard, but you will be rewarded many times over.

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Let me share the secret of why Barker chose the title Wide Open with you.

“ I dreamed I saw you dead in a place by the water.
A ravaged place.
All flat and empty and wide open.”

What did I say right at the start? - Never EVER underestimate the importance of the physical landscape of a novel.

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For some inextricable reason it took two years for this novel to win the International Impac Award after it's publication in 1998. I believe there is talk of it being made into a film at some point too. Nicola Barker has a few other books to her name, the most recent being “Five Miles From Outer Hope”.

"Wide Open" is currently retailing on Amazon for £5.59 ad the ISBN number is 0-571-19566-0

Thanks for reading.
 

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